ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI EXIT INTERVIEW This is February 20, 1981, interview with Dr. Brzezinski in his office at 1800 K Street, Washington, DC. The interviewer is Marie Allen. ALLEN: First, I'd like to ask you some personal questions about your background as a diplomat's son and your father coming from Poland. What influence do you think this particular background has had on your attitude toward world affairs and on your choice of career? BRZEZINSKI: It clearly made me very interested in international affairs and pointed me in the direction of either diplomacy or foreign affairs more generally; or, at least, a study of international politics. ALLEN: Because, did your father love the field? BRZEZINSKI: Yes. ALLEN: It was very much his one choice of career, too. BRZEZINSKI: Yes. It was something that interested me and, of course, I grew up during the war years, which meant that foreign events were terribly important. ALLEN: I've seen in print your story of the day that you learned that Poland had fallen. Could you recount that on tape? How old you were and what the circumstances were. BRZEZINSKI: I have seen that story and I think that it was somewhat exaggerated because actually Poland didn't fall in a single day. It was overrun in the course of several weeks and, of course, it was extremely unpleasant; but also, at the same time, terribly exhilarating. One had a sense of struggle for something that one believed in and that was quite important. ALLEN: Do you remember a particular day in which these events culminated finally and that your father learned... BRZEZINSKI: Probably the capitulation of Warsaw, that would be one particular moment that was poignant. The other day was, some two weeks earlier when the Soviets attacked Poland stabbing it in the back and, thereby, sealing its fate. For that attack made the resistance to the Nazi's impossible. ALLEN: Did your father tell you about these things? BRZEZINSKI: Oh no. I followed them myself. I was a young kid, very young. But, I 1 read the newspapers regularly and I listened to the radio. ALLEN: You were, what, eleven or twelve? BRZEZINSKI: I was eleven. ALLEN: Do you remember him talking to you about it afterward? BRZEZINSKI: Oh sure. Yes. ALLEN: Can you volunteer the--how he felt--you know, what his feelings were? BRZEZINSKI: Well, you know, I don't want to get too much involved in this personal biography. ALLEN: Okay. Let's go on then. What was the--you chose this career, a diplomat's career very early then. How did you get started? What were the first steps? BRZEZINSKI: Well, in addition to being intensely interested in foreign affairs throughout my school years, in college I followed foreign affairs much more systematically and studied international politics. Then I went to Harvard and became particularly interested in Soviet studies and that became my major focus of interest. Then in the course of the later '50's I became more interested in the overall condition of the Soviet bloc and Soviet-East European/Chinese relations became something that I followed. I advised President Kennedy in the course of his Presidential campaign in 1960 on East/West relations. That got me interested, in turn, in the study of East/West relations and I did some work on that for the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. That, in turn, led to my serving in the State Department in the mid '60's on the Policy Planning Council, where I worked very much on East/West relations, particularly on the concept of peaceful engagement on building bridges which culminated in President Johnson's speech on that subject. Changing some of our basic priorities, for example, abandoning the notion that first there must be reunification of Germany and then detente. And accepting the notion that detente can someday create preconditions for German reunification. That, in turn, led to my working for Vice-President Humphrey as director of his foreign policy task forces in '68. That, in turn, made me aware of the importance of knowing more about Asia in addition to European problems into which I had branched out. So, after the defeat, I went and studied Asia. I went to Japan. I wrote a book about Japan's world role. That, in turn, led to the formation of the Trilateral Commission which worked on the relations between Europe and the United States. That, in turn, led to my meeting Jimmy Carter. ALLEN: Do you remember the day in which you first met him and what the circumstances were? BRZEZINSKI: I first met him at one of the meetings of the Trilateral Commission. He 2 was a member of it. ALLEN: In New York? BRZEZINSKI: In New York. I was one of those who selected him to be a member. Subsequently, in one of the Commission's meetings in Japan, he asked me, out of the blue, to take part in a press conference that he was giving, to accompany him to it. Which I did. And I became more impressed by him and it was then that I decided even though he had only two percent national recognition, not support, just recognition. I then decided, at that moment, to support him for the Presidency. ALLEN: Was there a good personal chemistry between the two of you, do you think, from the beginning? BRZEZINSKI: Yes. It was always a kind of relaxed and mutually confident relationship. Somehow we meshed well. And I just felt, you know, reasonably well with him and I think he felt the same way with me. Somehow or other we complemented each other. Somehow or other I also had the feeling that I understood him. As I worked with him in the White House, I was struck very often at how I could anticipate what he was going to say or how he was going to react. Almost unfailingly, I would know what he was going to say before he said it. Or, I could anticipate his reaction to a situation. ALLEN: The Trilateral Commission, as I understand it, was dedicated to the expansion of these contacts with the three centers. Did Jimmy Carter, at this early point, believe in the importance of the tri-lateral relationship, do you think? It was not something that developed? He believed in it at that point? BRZEZINSKI: No, I think he did. ALLEN: Do you remember when you first discussed the job of National Security Affairs Advisor with the President? BRZEZINSKI: Yes. It was in the fall after the elections when he was consulting me on whom to appoint to the different slots in the government and it was in that context that we, for the first time, talked about the possibility of my working for him--first, briefly by telephone and then, in the longer interview in Atlanta. ALLEN: Was this the job that was your first choice or would you have preferred State Department? 3 BRZEZINSKI: Oh, I never wanted to be Secretary of State. People have never believed me when I have said that. I didn't want to be Secretary of State, prior to coming to Washington, and I didn't particularly want to be Secretary of State while in Washington. I always wanted the job of Assistant for National Security Affairs in the White House, for a very simple reason. It was a more important job. It was the key job. It involved the integration of the top inputs from State, Defense, and CIA. And, above all, it meant that you were close to a President whom I knew would be an activist. And, therefore, being close to him and working with him was centrally important. ALLEN: You were quoted as saying at one point that you wanted that job to have more architecture and less acrobatics. Can you expand on what you meant by that? BRZEZINSKI: Yes. I felt very strongly that we shouldn't have just a policy of maneuver which I felt our predecessors did, but a policy of building sustained, long-term relationships. And I think we did that. We did that in the Middle East for the first time in addition to Israel with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. We did that, above all, with China. And I believe that we have reinforced, in the course of those four years that we were in the office, relationships with Europe. ALLEN: By maneuvering, do you mean well-publicized international trips? The appearance rather than the substance. BRZEZINSKI: Either that, or sudden changes in relationships. For example, the sudden jolt to Japan which our predecessors inflicted on it without any warning, things of that sort. ALLEN: So, in your view it was more important to build the substance? BRZEZINSKI: Right. And, in fact, I believed that one of the things that history is going to give Carter credit for is that his policies had, in fact, a lot of substance. I think where he failed was in not communicating effectively the substance of his policies to the public and making the public appreciate how much is being done. He loved formal speeches and he wasn't good at them. And, at the same time, no one else could do it because if I did it the whole State Department would jump all over my back--and Vance couldn't do it and Muskie was not there long enough to do it. ALLEN: So there was a gap in the communication role? BRZEZINSKI: Right. ALLEN: Thinking back to the early days of the Carter Administration, you were quoted as saying that there was a ninety day plan, foreign policy plan with several major things you hoped to accomplish in those first ninety days.